


Tomorrow is a Lie and Maybe so are You and I

by afellowofinfinitejest



Series: Jerome Angst [1]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/M, Jerome is brain-washed, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 19:19:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16687444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afellowofinfinitejest/pseuds/afellowofinfinitejest
Summary: When Jerome wakes up in Arkham, he believes he's the Mad Hatter, but he's missing his Alice.





	Tomorrow is a Lie and Maybe so are You and I

You hear about Jerome’s return less than two days after he’s let loose. His face, the same but different. An identical jaw, a grin of bared teeth, the large hat atop his head, is splashed across every newspaper in Gotham. Jerome has taken up his old mission anew. Stronger and somehow more violent than before, he has set about freeing the citizens of Gotham from their mechanical prison. Starting with attacking an office and ransacking official files about the criminals of Gotham.

Blood splashed over him haphazardly, a gun in one hand and the files he stole in the other. You stare at the picture of him taken by security cameras until the vendor yells at you. Seeing him, so alive and so similar to the way you knew him, makes you feel his presence physically. Something inside you, something you had been stitching up gradually, tears open in an instant. You’re left raw, aching. But the longing is resentful. It was so very Jerome; to fool you in to believing he was gone forever, to leave you alone until you almost felt able to continue without him. 

Deep down, you know he’s looking for you. Part of you wants to seek him out. Another, aggressively defiant, forces you to wait.

The boy had, in his lifetime, held himself to a higher standard that anybody else. He had seemed so detached; from Gotham, from society, from people in general. It had seemed to Dr. Strange that there was nothing but joyous disdain for everything around him in Jerome Valeska’s heart.

Hugo hadn’t exactly admired him, but he’d always been able to appreciate a psychopath who embraced their own nature, a killer without reservations. 

Still, he knew better now. For all Jerome was interesting, his reaction to his given story was grating. After he had accepted his identity, endlessly, Jerome ignored everything Hugo tried to teach him.

“Where is Alice?” He was repeating it all the time, whenever anybody ventured in to his room. The first few guards who went in without an answer had left with snapped necks. The more time passed, the more ferocious he became. “Where is she? Why are you keeping me from her?”

“Maybe we should kill him,” Ms. Peabody had said, watching the teenager through the two-way mirror. “Start over.”

“No,” Dr. Strange answered. “We just need to find Alice.”

“Alice is a character. She doesn’t exist.”

“Thank you, Ms. Peabody.” A strange excitement runs through him when he sees Jerome grinning at nothing, laughing at his own thoughts before he resumes yelling. “I think Jerome has applied to character to somebody else. Maybe that girl he was seen running around with before he came to us.”

“The girl?” Ms. Peabody asked, raising her eyebrows. “She vanished the minute Galavan stabbed him.”

“Yes, but I imagine somebody with his talents could find her, if he wanted to.”

So he let Jerome go, told him to find Alice and come back when he saw fit. He even went as far as directing him, supplying him with a gun and a flick knife. Despite his scattered mind, Jerome went about this new task with the dedication of a man obsessed. He found the mugshot they took of you before you were sent to Arkham, read all the information they had about you. Thought, (Y/N), must be an alias. How smart, Alice.

He finds you. Of course he does. People talk in the neighbourhood everybody goes to when they’re trying to hide, especially to people with a smile like his.

Within days of his release from Arkham, he’s climbing through your window. You watch him from your place on the couch, standing as he pulls himself through the frame. It’s instinctual, the sudden need to reach out and touch. You have always been that way with Jerome, but even more so now that a small part is still convinced he cannot be real. In contrast to your amazement, Jerome is looking around the apartment as if confused at finding you here, of all places. Then, he’s staring at you, eyes wide. “What have you done to yourself?”

You pull your eyebrows together, taken aback that the first thing he says is that. You’re surprised by the cruelty in the greeting, even from Jerome, defined by his brashness. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re holed up here, in this - place! Instead of being outside, where you should be, with me.”

“Well, you were dead for quite a while, Jerome. You’ll excuse me if I thought that meant we might spend some time apart.” You can feel your anger at the bottom of your throat, pushing you to react more violently, to yell at him. Every part of you screams, how dare he, until your fists are clenched at your sides, nails digging in to your palms.

His next response is what makes you pause. “Jer-ome?” 

“Yes,” you answer carefully. “Jerome.”

He turns his head to the side, observing you, then breaks out in to laughter. “You do play the strangest games, Alice!”

Alice? 

You observe the oversized green hat sitting over his hair, wondering how. It strikes you that Galavan had come back without any memory of who he was before, that the same could have happened to Jerome. But- 

“Who are you?” You ask, stepping towards him.

Jerome starts at your strange question, still chuckling. “I’m the Hatter, of course.”

“Oh, Jerome.” You extend your arms, touching at his face and jaw. The new scar at the side of his neck stands out under your fingers and you shiver, remembering the moment you felt it all fall apart. Sensing your discomfort, Jerome’s natural reaction is to try and comfort you. He strokes your hair with the gentleness of a lover, still bewildered by your actions. “Who told you that I’m Alice?”

“Nobody! I remember you. I know your face, so I looked for you.” He appears worried, as if he’s thinking as you are, that the person in front of him has lost all grasp on reality. 

“I’m not Alice. And you’re not the Hatter. That’s a story. You’re Jerome. Galavan killed you - you were dead!”

“I know I was dead! What does that matter, now? I’m here, Alice! Why are you being this way?”

“No, you don’t understand - you’re not listening.” This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. You were going to yell at him, punish hum for being so reckless as to be stabbed in the neck. Then you were going to forgive him, have everything as it was. You hadn’t realised how detailed your expectations were until they were pulled out from under you. Instead, you find yourself willing not to be angry at all, if only he would come back as Jerome.

“You’re not listening. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, and, here you are!” He throws his hands out happily before his expression takes a turn to seriousness. “It was very rude of me to chide you for staying inside. I know that now. I’ve offended you, Alice, and so you’re punishing me.”

“I’m not Alice, I’m (Y/N).”

He’s blinking at you and you realise it’s the first he’s heard it since you started speaking. “(Y/N).” 

You’re searching for recognition in his eyes, thinking maybe he needed something else to remember. Maybe if he remembered you, he could connect the dots and remember himself. “You called me doll, all the time. We met in Arkham, before. Galavan broke us out, but then he killed you and I ran away.”

Jerome’s face is taken over by confusion. “I remember Arkham-” He cuts himself off, looking away from you.

“They must have done something to you, made you think you were the Hatter.”

“But I’m…not. I’m Jerome,” he says, as if testing himself. You nod, trying to encourage him as much as you can. Hope edges against your scepticism. 

“That’s right. Jerome Valeska.” You can see the cogs in his head turning, the uncertainty in his eyes on account of you challenging what he has taken as reality. Then, a flicker of understanding. He stares at your face, bring his hands up to run his fingers under your eyes, down your cheek and across your lips. 

Then, he’s grinning. “I remember, doll.”

The name makes your heart leap, the wounds inside you soothed so gently by the promise that he knows you.

Jerome grabs you by the waist, pulling you to his chest. He captures your lips harshly, biting more than he is kissing. It’s the same, it’s the same, it’s the same.

Your mouth opens up to him naturally. You knock the hat off of his head, holding on to his hair and you’re confronted with how violently you missed him. “Jerome,” you moan softly, feeling his sharp breath spread over your lips. 

Arms around you, warm and steady. You sigh, pulling your fingers through his hair. He smells as he did, before, so you press your nose to the curve of his neck, listening to the steadiness of his breath. “Never leave me again.”

“Never, Alice.”

“Wh-” The noise you make when he presses the knife through your back makes him ache, feeling more guilty than he ever has. He had to hold you this way, hide your face while you died because he couldn’t bear seeing you feel betrayed. He hates hurting you, hates the idea of you feeling any pain on account of him. But he only wants you to remember, knows Dr. Strange can help. “Jerome-”

He shh’s you when you start to jolt, scratching at his back as if grasping on to him would let you cling on to life. “Don’t worry. I’ll get them to make you better.” You’re coughing, blood falling from your mouth to your chin. As you fade, your body dropping in his arms, Jerome holds you close to him. He kisses your forehead lightly, pulling the weapon from you and dropping it to stroke a hand through your hair. “I’ll make it all better, Alice.”

It’s not pain, exactly, that you feel next. It’s not a burning or an ache, but discomfort, the feeling that your body is protesting. Suddenly, you realise that you aren’t breathing, and panic overwhelms you because you don’t know how to start again. You can feel your arms and legs struggling against something, a pressure against your back, then soft breath against your cheeks. Your eyes open, and you find the strength to pull air in to your lungs. 

You couldn’t see the room even if you wanted to. Covering your field of vision is only him.

“Hello, Alice.”

You blink, taking in his wide grin, the soft curve of his nose. Joy at the familiar face fills you up until you’re smiling in return. “Hello, Hatter.”

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read, along with my other Jerome writing, on my tumblr, afellowofinfinitejest


End file.
